


There Are No Comets Seen

by drneroisgod



Category: H.I.V.E. Series - Mark Walden
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Assassination, Childhood Trauma, Discussion of Abortion, F/F, Fear of Death, Flashbacks, Gen, ILY, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Lesbian Raven, Medical Examination, Minor Character Death, Miscarriage, Murder, Parental Max Nero, Past Child Abuse, Sad with a Happy Ending, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, Unplanned Pregnancy, contemplation of mortality, happy birthday raven, i think i have everything horrible tagged, if not lmk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:22:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28624791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drneroisgod/pseuds/drneroisgod
Summary: After an important party, Raven reflects on her past and the person she was eight years ago: scared, alone, and pregnant. Caught up in disturbing memories of the Glasshouse, young Raven tries to find her way back to hope and home once more.
Relationships: Contessa Maria Sinistre & Raven, Diabolus Darkdoom & Natalya | Raven, Natalya | Raven & Maximilian Nero, Otto Malpense & Natalya | Raven
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	There Are No Comets Seen

**Author's Note:**

> I have been thinking about this story since July. It scared me a little to write it, but I wanted to write something that illustrated that even though Raven was saved by going to H.I.V.E., she wasn't healed. It made sense to me that when Raven encountered something really scary and difficult, she would still struggle with the Glasshouse mindset that told her she did not have the power to choose what happened with her own body.
> 
> I tried to put all the warnings I could think of in the tags! I do not believe anything is terribly explicit in nature, but some parts are nonetheless disturbing. If I have forgotten a prudent tag, please don't hesitate to let me know.

The summer I learned to dance, the Contessa’s daughter died. The Contessa took a leave of absence to manage her affairs and H.I.V.E. was not quite the same without her. It felt like the school withdrew into itself. There were three months afterwards with no external operations of any kind, and the entire school seemed subdued for the rest of the year. Perhaps that’s just how I remember it. Dr. Nero made a point of keeping me at home—he insisted I return to a more formal education and fill in the gaps left by my training at the Glasshouse: rhetoric, maths, literature, history, the sciences. Additionally, the doctor would join me once a week for dinner and a show: the two of us staring at our feet as he reminded me, again, on the finer points of a waltz. As a self-conscious young woman I was both stiff and awkward, and my lessons took longer than they should have. Nero never seemed to care, and, eventually, I didn’t either.

It surprises my students sometimes. Recently, Otto Malpense observed Nero and myself equipping ourselves for a mission in the same mirror, Nero hunched down to knot his black tie and I leaning over him to apply my lipstick.

“You know how to dance?” he asked me, skeptically.

“Dr. Nero taught me himself,” I replied.

He watched us with close concentration. “I guess I never pegged you as the type.”

Nero shot him a raised eyebrow as he stood by the door, first to pull on his heavy coat and then to help me into mine. “All part of a well-rounded education, Mr. Malpense. I expect no nonsense while we’re out, are we clear?”

Otto looked at us with an eerie calm. “Yes, sir.”

In the car, I slid my swords beneath our feet, reflexively checking that he was wearing his seat belt before I secured my own.

He watched me, too. “I trust you’ll save the last dance for me?” he asked, only teasing a little. He was thinking about that summer, too—I could see it in his eyes. 

“Always, doctor.”

* * *

I was twenty-four and I killed people the same way a soldier kicks in a stained glass window: quickly and thoughtlessly. I was too well-trained to be sloppy. I left no trace in the shadows, no boot prints in the snow. But I had a difficult upbringing and was still becoming unaccustomed to cages. I let my wildness seep into my missions like grass stains or spilled wine. I was not myself. I slit a man’s throat, then stole his car. Simple. Clear. And then I would find myself in a nightclub, too reserved to even glance toward the dance floor, but too enthralled to leave. I liked to order a rum and coke that I never drank—I just needed its company. Then, around two in the morning, I’d go back to my hotel and throw back a shot of vodka before I went to sleep. Every night, I called Nero and lied to his face about where I was going and what I was doing. I didn’t want him to worry. I bought fireworks and set them off in the desert alone. I tried smoking and didn’t like it. I tried Chinese food for the first time and did. I enjoyed the thrill of waiting for a bus at midnight or an early morning joyride. I bought chamomile tea in museum gift shops and watched the people in the art gallery, never quite seeing the art.

I was twenty-four and I was two different people, neither of whom ever saw the light of day. 

Nero recalled me after a number of missions in western Europe, one after another. His flickering digital face surveyed me in my safehouse, suspicious but silent, for now.

“I have arranged for a Shroud to pick you up at 0700 hours,” he told me. “I expect you to be ready.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. 

“And if the safehouse needs restocking, I’d recommend taking care of that before you go,” Nero informed me. “You never know when you’ll be back.”

I knew this and had done this, but I thanked him for the reminder anyway. Let him think I’d spend my last few hours in town buying toilet paper and canned soup. Something else about those nightclubs, about that rum and coke I never managed to taste: they made me a different kind of hunter. Nero didn’t need to know about that. No one did.

I left my belongings ready for me at the door and set an alarm on my watch. Then, the night was mine.

I liked the Lèvres Jaunes for its dissonance. As a nightclub, it was ordinary. People danced beneath colored lights that hurtled toward the walls hard enough to leave stains amid pop music loud enough to drown out a jet engine. The people were hot and the drinks were cold and it always smelled like cigarettes and spilled beer, with the occasional whiff of piss. It was perfect in its unfamiliarity, and I went as often as I could while on mission. No one was watching me and so I took risks. Boys took me home. Girls took me home. I liked the girls, but I liked the Lèvres Jaunes better. No barbed wire. No concrete walls. No deadbolts on the doors. No guns. No silence. And everyone wore different clothes. 

It was my last night there, and I had no intention of going home empty-handed. 

I don’t remember what I said or what she was drinking. I’m not sure if I even asked for her name. But I remember the two of us spilling out into the streets like light pollution, a little dizzy and a little unwise. We went to her place, of course. Fooled around for a while. She lay against her pillows and winked at me as I moved my head down below, one hand stretched to the top of her headboard and the other hidden beneath the blankets, completely relaxed. She laughed when I was finished—a throaty, satisfied thing that caught me as much off-guard as her yielding lips. 

She fell asleep with her arm around me and for that, I loved her. Many of my dalliances realized in short order that I was unused to affectionate touch and they pulled away quickly. They did not want to hold an ice cold fish like me and I was not about to tell them about an adolescence comprised of bruises. That girl could not have known that it had been a very long time since I had been held and that I needed it like wax needs a wick to melt. Her embrace was perfectly painless. I cannot tell you how she smelled or the exact angle of her smile. I can only tell you that she was warm. Something came alive within me, something I could hold onto and feed on for weeks to come, in a Hong Kong hotel, in the English countryside, beside an Italian lakefront where lanterns lit the sky.

I left before she woke up and was waiting for my ride home when it landed. As I watched the city get smaller and smaller in the distance, I thought about my younger self. She had never hoped to be held—she had never hoped for anything. I remembered what they taught us about love: that it wasn’t real. Well-controlled soldiers did not distract themselves with the flimsiness of emotions. As a grown woman I only knew how to fall in love for an evening at a time, but I was learning.

Nero’s summons was on my blackbox before I landed. I left the shroud in a brisk, purposeful walk. He was waiting. I entered his office uncautiously—he was used to my interruptions and I was used to his eagerness to get to business. He looked up over the heaps of reports on his desk and smiled. “Natalya.”

“Review season already?” I asked, taking a chair.

“Already, I’m afraid,” he agreed. “Any difficulties while you were out?”

He valued my honesty more than my successes. I told him, “The Norweigian diplomat gave me more trouble than anticipated—some of the blueprints of his home were outdated.”

“I trust you compensated for it.”

“I most certainly did.”

He looked up but not at me, stretching his neck from side to side. “I have a G.L.O.V.E. council meeting in Hong Kong tomorrow.”

“I remember. When do we leave?”

“In three hours,” he sighed. He saw the look on my face and smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry.”

“Wheels up in three hours,” I repeated, standing. “I’ll be there.”

I went to my quarters and slept for two hours. I woke, showered, vomited, dressed, brushed my teeth, and grabbed my bag. I was in the crater reviewing the pre-flight checklist well before Nero stepped onto the ramp.

“All set?” he asked cheerfully, buckling his seatbelt.

“Always,” I replied.

The flight to Hong Kong was very nearly uneventful, save for the last moments. Nero peered out the window as we prepared to land—I will never know how he saw it through the smog and the darkness, but he called out, “Don’t land! This site has been compromised. Keep moving.”

We flew on to our backup arrangement. The delay sat tangibly on Nero’s shoulders—Number One demanded punctuality and the meeting was already underway by the time we arrived.

“You’re late.”

My heart skipped a beat, but this was the G.L.O.V.E. council and I was Nero’s assassin. There was no margin for weakness, and Number One’s cold drawl was directed toward my employer, not myself. I kept my face frozen.

 _Later,_ I told myself. _Worry about it later_.

Nero’s face remained impassive, meeting the gazes of his fellow G.L.O.V.E. leaders without fear or, indeed, any particular interest. He lifted his eyes to Number One’s digital silhouette. 

“My sincere apologies, Number One,” Nero said. “I’m afraid I come with most urgent news. I have reason to believe our southwest location has been compromised.”

“Compromised?” Number One asked coldly. “I am told you landed at an entirely separate location. How could you know?”

“There are black garbage bags covering the windows of the top floors,” Nero replied calmly. “I suspect local law enforcement may be laying in wait for the next big name to come down the stairs.”

Number One acknowledged this grudgingly. “I have dispatched teams to investigate. In the interest of secrecy, we will keep this meeting brief. Maximilian, sit. Raven, you are dismissed.”

I disappeared, which is to say, I donned my mask and crouched in the shadows for another hour until, one by one, the G.L.O.V.E. operatives left the meeting room, their whispers hushed and wandering. Nero left, too, accompanied by Gregori Leonov. I followed discreetly. They were talking about me.

“She is becoming most impressive,” Leonov said. “Where is she?”

“Just behind us,” Nero said, gesturing. I removed myself from the shadows momentarily, saluting Leonov once before returning to the darkness. “Going home, Gregori?”

“No, no,” Leonov said, grinning. “I am meeting up with a few friends for drinks further downtown. Care to join us, Max? I know you can hold your whiskey.”

“Alas, no.” Nero inclined his head toward the car waiting for us. “Tomorrow is a school day.”

I pulled off my mask before joining them properly. 

“And what about you, Raven?” Leonov clapped both my shoulders. “Fancy a drink with the big boys?”

“No, thank you.”

“We’ll be in touch, Gregori,” Nero said. “Until next time.”

We left Leonov waving on a brightly-lit corner, glowing cheerfully amid the neon lights and honking horns as if he belonged there.

“Given everything that’s happened, I was thinking about flying straight back to H.I.V.E.,” Nero said. “Are you up for it?”

As if on cue, a sudden wave of nausea rolled down my body. I swallowed and looked in his eyes like my life depended on it. 

“Actually, I don’t think I can,” I said. “But if you want to go, you can drop me off near my place and I’ll make my own way home.”

Nero shook his head. “If we’re staying, then I want a real bed. Do you feel all right? You look a little pale.”

“Too many long hours,” I said. He studied me, unconvinced, but put the phone to his ear and called a hotel.

I was so tired, I fell asleep on the couch waiting for our dinners to be delivered. 

“Oh no you don’t,” Nero said, nudging me awake. “I paid for that second bed and you are going to sleep in it.”

He led me away from the couch and into the bedroom, closing the door as he left me for the night. I could kill within the space of a heartbeat, but that night, it took all my energy to strip down to my shirt and underwear. The city was loud, my head throbbed, and the bed seemed to roll beneath me, and none of it mattered. The covers took me in seconds. 

The next morning, I left my room only when I was sure Nero was in the shower. I slipped a knife and a debit card in my pockets and was gone. 

Thirteen minutes out. I went to the ATM for cash and I went to the pharmacy for a little pink box. Both were essential. The little pink box because Number One had been right—I _was_ late. I needed a pregnancy test. I needed to know. And the cash because Nero, my friend, my mentor—he never could. Ever.

Seven minutes passed in the hotel’s public lavatory. I wrapped the used test in toilet paper and shoved it to the bottom of the trash can. I washed my hands and returned to our room, where I was forced to knock for entry. In my haste, I hadn’t taken a key card.

Nero was upset. “Really, Raven,” he said snippily. “You could have at least left a note. What on earth were you doing?”

“Just looking for some breakfast,” I said. 

“Well, consider this a warning,” he said. “I don’t like my staff to be unreliable. This was unreliable.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. Are you ready to go?”

Our flight home was frosty—but we were home. Nero disappeared back into his reviews and his lessons, and I found myself free, temporarily. There were reports to write and my training to keep up with. It could wait.

I withdrew to my room and cried for three hours. I was pregnant, I was terrified, and, for the first time since I had come to Nero’s school, I was alone.

_One eye. One hand. Lungs filled with water. Sand in her face, in her skin. Plump and rotten and dead. I remembered her._

_“Do you think she was a slut?”_

By that time, H.I.V.E. had moved past its rocky transition period and truly settled into life inside a volcano. The showers ran hot, dinner was served promptly at six-thirty every night, and we almost never had to worry about the geothermic controls. The next few weeks demonstrated the school’s commitment to ordinariness in the typical wax and wane of the class timetable; I used it as a shield. I wasn’t showing, but that wouldn’t last. I pushed myself hard in the gym and skipped breakfasts, rising each morning with the fervent hope that Nero would send me out again and falling into bed each night disappointed and anxious because he did not. I cried more than was my custom and ended up soaked to the skin with sweat after meeting with my sparring partners. I tired quickly. Everything I did, I did to avoid attention.

I did not have many friends, which helped. I was older than all the students but younger than most of the staff. Nero kept an eye on me, as usual, but when I didn’t give him reasons to worry, he tended not to look too closely into my affairs. I missed the Lèvres Jaunes the way I missed candlelight in windows: I could do without. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever make my way there again. Nightclubs offered one kind of safety, but it was not what I needed. I could remember everything, still—the smiling barbed wire jaws and the ice on concrete walls and the finality of a deadbolt locking into place. The guns. The silence. H.I.V.E. gave me something else to mull on. I did not speak unless spoken to, but people smiled at me. I had blankets every night. And I spent a lot of time with Colonel Francisco, who was one of the few people who could hold his own against me for any length of time.

“You been sleeping?” he asked after a boxing match.

I toweled my wet face. “Yes.”

“You don’t look it,” he said. “Go easy on yourself, kid.”

I sneered at him and left without another word—that was the closest anyone came to suspecting something was wrong with me. Even so, I kept my guard up and ready at all times. I feared questions more than I feared a right hook or a singing blade. I knew the limits of my body, or I thought I did. I knew I could take pain. Questions? I wasn’t sure.

It worked out in a funny way, in the end. One loss, and then another. I don’t believe that things happen for a reason—it hurts too much to think otherwise—but again, it’s funny. Nero—Max—calls it juxtaposition. I think it’s just sad.

We were in his office, reviewing the details of one mission or another. I focused on my breathing. It’s your lungs that will catch you in a lie, and I was lying all the time then. He remarked on my successes, and I noted improvements to be made.

“The colonel tells me you’ve been putting in extra tactical training hours,” Nero said. “That’s admirable, but I don’t wonder if it might be wise for you to diversify your lesson plan.”

“Can’t let myself get soft,” I told him. I did not say, _I deserve it,_ but, somehow, I think he knew.

“I don’t imagine that will be a big problem for you,” he said, frowning. “Raven, do you—”

The door buzzer rang.

“Enter,” Nero called. Contessa Sinistre rippled into the room and with her, tangible vengeance. I had always known her to be a dangerous woman, but on that day you could see the violence in her posture, the agonized energy charging in her long, thin fingers. Her eyes were as dull as they were red, and wet. Her skin was a deathly pale beneath the still-perfect monument of her hair and she seemed not to breathe, soundless and yet unstill. She opened her mouth, closed it again, frowned. I had the prickling sense I was looking at the mind of a wounded beast. Prepared to kill. Prepared to die. Something was horribly wrong.

“Maria,” Nero said, standing instantly. “What on earth is the matter?”

Her musical voice cut like the broken edge of a sea shell. “My daughter,” she hissed. “My daughter is dead.”

I took my place in the shadows as Nero took her elbow, guiding her to a seat and asking how she got the news, did she know what happened, was she certain. There was a little girl. They could not yet confirm if she had been in the car when the bomb went off. They were looking. The Contessa’s daughter, though. They knew.

“She wasn’t like us, Max,” the Contessa said, her voice crystal cold and quiet. “She was a journalist.”

“I’m sorry,” he said simply. 

The Contessa seemed to regain herself, or at least her thoughts. “I need to go.”

“At once,” Nero agreed. “I’ll order a shroud. What else can I do?”

“I do not know if my granddaughter is alive, but if she is, then I will need time. To help her settle.”

“It’s yours.”

Then she looked at me with the greatest sadness I have ever known. “And I want Raven. I want Raven to make Olivia’s killer pay.”

My breath hitched. A mission. Finally. “Yes, Contessa.”

Nero looked at me—formally, it was his decision to make. But between the fury in the Contessa’s clenched fists and the determination in mine, he had no power to stop us. We needed this. Both of us.

It was decided I would piggyback off the investigating task force in England, using their detective work to identify my target. And then I would be on my own. The Contessa would fly with me as far as her search for her granddaughter would take her; I had a bag packed and ready. 

I was not surprised that Nero stopped to visit before I left, though it was rarely his habit to do so. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have guessed he was anxious, which only made me _more_ anxious. Did he suspect? Did he know? I rushed through our goodbyes.

“Natalya,” he said. “Come home safely.”

“You know me,” I replied. “Safety first.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, but said nothing, even as he watched me climb up the ramp and onto the shroud. When I glanced back, I thought he knew how he felt.

* * *

I had imagined being a mother. Of course I had. 

I was a little girl in an alleyway, once. A dusty, cold little girl, and she had a baby doll that she cradled faithfully and sang to at night. I was a little girl and I was not unusual. When you live like that, you try to find the only kind of stability you know about. Children try to be mothers and fathers to urchins just like them. Just as scared. Just as hungry. We were raising ourselves because no one else would. 

I could do better. I knew it. If _I_ had a baby, I would keep him safe. I would do it right. There would be someone just like me in the world and we would never be alone. He would love me and I would love him and we would always be happy together.

I was very young, you understand. 

Those thoughts did occur to me, in that hotel bathroom, in that locker room, in that helicopter. I could have a baby. And it would be nice. 

Nero would be as annoyingly kind to me as he had been to the Contessa, if it was really what I wanted. I could have walked into his office and said, “Max, I’m expecting a baby and giving you my notice.” He would cover his surprise, for my sake. He would say, “Have you thought about where you want to go? Are you feeling all right? Do you need help finding a new position?” He would see me off on the day of my departure. He might even visit after it was born. He’d stay in touch, at least for a while. Then I would have a new life, a life where I might very well find love, if not happiness, if not safety.

But it was a life I no longer wanted. I remade myself in steel and kevlar and the life I had at H.I.V.E. was too precious to lose. I hated to think about it, but this furtive dance was never my only choice. Nero would have helped me if I asked. If I had returned to that Hong Kong hotel room and told him the truth, he would have cleared the path for me. He wouldn’t pry, and I would not have spent the last month sneaking around. 

But I couldn’t tell him. I would not tell him. I made a promise to myself. When I imagined holding a baby, its body was cold like snow in my arms. I held it close, warming it against my chest, and with every breath, it slowly melted away. 

* * *

England greeted us with good news. The granddaughter was not in the accident. She was alive. I left the Contessa in a church, the first and only time I ever saw her in one. She lit a candle for her daughter. I knew better than to say anything.

“Find him,” the Contessa said, her voice tired. “End this for me.”

I nodded once, and left her. 

The intelligence team was deep into its work by the time I arrived on the scene. I was greeted with the cool submission I was growing accustomed to from the team leader in charge, formal and calm. 

“What have you got?” I asked.

“The bomb was made by people in the business,” replied Agent Zero, his reflective sunglasses returning my own sallow complexion. “We have a few leads on some of the rarer components. We should have more information for you shortly.”

I confess, I went into that meeting not fully sure what to expect. This woman’s death could have been many things: a message sent to the Contessa, a G.L.O.V.E. action turned badly, retaliation against the mysterious Sinistre voice. Even if things were as they seemed and she was killed for the story she was reporting on—which she was—I might have found myself with disappointing news to convey for the Contessa. G.L.O.V.E. has assassinated its fair share of journalists. I would know.

But, ultimately, G.L.O.V.E. was not responsible for this death. It is not my habit to share our investigative methods or G.L.O.V.E. intelligence beyond what is absolutely necessary. In the event that this document is discovered prematurely, my secrecy will protect its reader from the threat of data extraction and myself from yet another variable the next time I’m in the field. I can say that the trigger was pulled by a virtual nobody—a foot soldier in a modern cold war—but he represented a much larger, more important government. Someone else had ordered Olivia Dexter’s murder, someone who thought himself very important, so it was my job to finish him. I kill decision-makers and I make them regret it. That’s my job.

I hunted my target to his hometown. The air was humid and there was music playing downtown that could be heard all the way to his isolated little castle. White plaster walls and video cameras—everything the modern politician needs to feel a little safer at home. I watched him long enough to get a sense of his schedule. His staff, his security team, his children, his wife were all electrons buzzing around his nucleus, and with a little patience it became clear that this element was unstable. The family would be out. The staff could be distracted. I would make my target shiver with fear. An ordinary assassination.

This was where things began to get complicated for me. 

I needed an abortion. This was a certainty in my mind, so I had found a provider and withdrawn the cash to pay for one in my suitcase. I wasn’t quite sure what they would do to me. I hated that. More than once I sat with a phone in my hand, hopeful that with a few deep breaths I would find the confidence to call and ask a few questions. Would they put me under? Would I be fit to drive afterwards? After I killed my target, I couldn’t stick around for a time-consuming medical procedure; if I showed up to an assassination groggy, it might be my own life cut short instead. Timing is everything in my business. 

But I couldn’t make the call. I cried for four hours in a hotel room, furious with myself for my weakness and yet seizing with panic when I even thought about speaking out loud. I knew I was stupid and crazy for feeling this way and I loathed that weak thing in me that was afraid of metal instruments and white lab coats and the scratching of pencil against a clipboard. Weakness was unforgivable in my eyes and the longer I failed to deal with my problem, the more I was convinced that I was becoming irredeemably pathetic. 

In the end, I decided I would just have to walk in and let chance be my compass. If I could kill a man when half-asleep, surely I could manage it when recovering from general anesthesia and so on. Nero would have skinned me alive for making such an irresponsible decision, if he’d known—I took every precaution to scour my anxiety from my voice before every call with him. 

I spoke with the Contessa once, to update her on my status.

“It’s all ready,” I told her. “I won’t contact you when it’s finished. It won’t be safe. You’ll probably find out on the news.”

“I understand.” The Contessa’s voice was still musical, even as it was soft and profoundly sad. Even on my little Blackbox screen, I could see that she had dark circles under her eyes and carried the lethargy of someone who was not eating regularly. “As long as it’s done.”

“Yes ma’am.”

She looked at me as though she didn’t recognize me. “Dismissed.”

Somehow, I wished that she might notice that I was also tired, that I was carrying the weight of fifty fears on my back and still doing this momentous thing on her behalf. I saw she was upset; why didn’t she see me? But then, she was in mourning, and, even if she did, we were never much for idle chatter. 

If you are wondering why I, an experienced assassin, was afraid of calling a doctor’s office to ask a question about something I wanted more than anything in the world, then remember that killing had become safe for me. Doctors never were. 

I was fourteen. The Glasshouse was in Siberia and while we were protected from the wind and the wet inside the concrete walls, one could never fully escape the cold. You got used to it. 

While I had tried to escape the Glasshouse before, I was used to it by then, as well. 

I was escorted by men with guns to a room with a high metal bench and a number of instruments on the wall. I could see my breath in the room. A middle-aged man spoke with Madame Furan to the side. They both looked up as I entered.

“You will be examined by Dr. Svoboda,” Furan said. It was an order. I twisted, slightly, and both my escorts put their hands to their guns. “Now, now, Natalya. It won’t hurt a bit.”

“Strip,” the doctor said. “Quickly.”

I did. Furan did not lie: my skin was poked with metal instruments and my joints prodded with rubber hammers, my weight and height taken with a scale and measuring tape, my heartbeat amplified by a frigid silver stethoscope that lingered on my chest, and it did not hurt. I was cold, I was embarrassed, I was uncomfortable—but it did not hurt. I was even permitted to stand behind a curtain when they asked for a urine sample.

I think I was a different person by the time they allowed me to put my clothes back on. Understand that I remember how it felt the first time because I was scared. Understand that, by the time I was sixteen, I was used to it. And understand, or try to, that I had still not recovered eight years later.

Let me put it this way: I went. I was examined. 

“Hmm,” said the doctor, looking at her instruments. 

“Yes?” I prompted.

“I don’t have a heartbeat,” she said, lifting her empty hands as if she’d had it only moments before. Clearly, she was not talking about herself.

“Then I don’t need to be here,” I said, my relief ballooning through me.

The doctor wanted to argue, wanted a surgery. I’d have to wait around, I needed a ride home. More steps. More time.

“But it will also happen naturally,” I said.

“One week,” the doctor conceded unhappily. “If it doesn’t happen in one week, then you won’t be able to wait any longer. The risk of infection is too great.”

I was twenty-four and I was a shard of stained glass, made of sharp edges and incomplete pictures. I kept my mind empty and my heart emptier as I left that clinic. As many ways as there are to tell this story, I find it most honest to focus on the pieces, the way I did that day. Though I did my best to deny it I had a lot to think about. I did my best to tamp those hard questions down where I wouldn’t have to acknowledge that I was hurting. It seemed easier not to feel anything at all. 

In my car, I found I had missed three calls from Nero. He was more than a little annoyed when I called him back.

“Where were you?” he demanded. “I have been waiting.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” I replied. I offered no excuse—no excuse is ever enough when you have failed. Nero, however, wished to pursue the point.

“Do you care to explain yourself?”

“I do not,” I said, a little more sardonically than I intended. “I take it you have more urgent matters to discuss.”

“I do,” Nero said icily. It was rare that we argued; this one coated our voices with lead. “I was reaching out to inform you that we believe your target may have been tipped off. He’s running.”

“I’m on my way,” I said, already turning the key in the ignition. 

Nero communicated the coordinates and the anticipated resistance. I gunned the engine. Though my target’s city home was lavish and quite secure, he also had a country home. It was equally as fortified and came with all the advantages of distance from a large metropolis: abundant silence, few eyewitnesses, and more leeway to use firearms. On top of that, I had not been able to scope out the homestead. Mystery and danger: icing on the cake.

I stalked my prey in the tall grasses, less like a raven and more like a lioness or a demon from hell. I enjoy the similes my victims ascribe to my career. They are apt, if bitter. The security team marched upstairs and down and I watched until their routine clicked into place like the tumblers on a lock. I made my grit-grime climb up the side of the house and emerged with my body weight in gray dust on my uniform and shoes. I cut their cameras. And then I took on my target’s security team, challenging each of the five men one after the other and drawing first blood every time. They tried shooting me. My swords echoed the whispers of their last breaths until the house was still again and I could listen for him: the killer. 

He had wrapped himself up in a silver safe room sold to him by a company that had never heard of me. He offered me money before he died; many do. He cried, which also happens.

“You don’t understand,” he begged. “I don’t deserve—”

I drew my sword through his throat before he could finish. He looked at me, choking on his blood, his expression just a little bit indignant before his face slumped. 

I wiped my blades down on his blankets, sheathed them, and disappeared.

In general, it is best not to get too involved in the details of the target’s life. It is easier that way, and less messy. However, as I hopped on a train out of the country, I reflected that my target had come by his behavior “honestly,” to borrow a term from Colonel Francisco. That is to say, he learned his trade at his father’s knee and followed in his footsteps for most of his political career. 

The target learned to be a politician from his father. The Contessa was never any kind of journalist, but her daughter shared their gift for twisting minds. And I was a killer, like my mentor had once been a killer.

I didn’t want to think about that, any more than I wanted to think about anything else that was happening. But while I could ignore my miscarriage it was impossible to ignore her. She always felt comfortable touching my face, Madame Furan. 

“Tusya,” she had said, once. She had been drinking and I had been...disruptive. “It may feel inspiring to be the one to break windows or to sneak behind bushes. But I assure you, it changes nothing.”

“I know it changes nothing,” I said.

She placed two fingers under my chin and forced me to look up at her. “I don’t believe you do, my dear.”

My punishment was more training. Eight students in my age group had survived the years in the cold, and though it had been more than two years since I had spoken to any of them, I recognized their faces and knew their names when I met them in the arena. She gave the group one task: kill me. Not one escaped.

“Understand, Natalya, that if it was not you, it would have been someone else,” Furan said to me, as I walked away from the bodies. “You were only incidental to their deaths.”

“Yes, Madame,” I agreed placidly. 

That night they found one of the girls from a lower year drowned in a lake near the compound. She was laid out on the grass, one eye missing and the flesh of her wrist jagged where her hand had been pulled away. Her belly was swollen with more than rot. I was never told if the evidence indicated murder. I only knew that if she had walked into the water of her own accord, she did it because she felt she had no choice. 

I knew that feeling very well, and I remembered her as a sister-in-arms, of sorts. The kind of girl who would recognize me on the other side if I ever found myself in her situation. I remembered her again that night and thought, _I can’t be by myself tonight._

* * *

We celebrate my birthday on January 7th, Christmas. Despite myself, I look forward to it. Max’s gift is always dinner at some extraordinary place where the cost of our meal and the flatware besides could feed a needy child for six months. I still enjoy myself. The day has become special for me in a way that it never was when I was young. 

This time he took me to Argentina, I won’t say where. The meal was delicious and the weather conducive for a walk afterwards. I was not surprised when he asked me about this time in my life—we had not found time to discuss it after our mission, and he has been evaluating H.I.V.E.’s sexual education program these last few weeks.

“When did you know?” I asked.

“After you went to Diabolus’s house, I was more than a little confused,” he admitted. “I reviewed your recent locations and put the pieces together from there.”

“I figured it was probably something like that. I had parked in the lot to make for a quick exit, but it meant it would be easier for someone to figure out why I was going to the clinic.”

“Is there anything we could have done to make it easier for you?” he asked, though I knew he wasn’t really asking about me. He was asking for today’s students, the as-yet undrowned girls who also end up pregnant or sick and so on. 

I scared him badly, I think, which is my only regret when I look back. 

“No,” I told him. “In some ways, I think they were all mistakes I needed to make myself. If I didn’t deal with them then, they would have turned up eventually.”

We walked in silence for some time, he deep in thought and I enchanted with the smell of fried food bubbling up beneath the stars. 

“Max,” I said suddenly. “Why did you teach me to dance, of all things?”

“Well, I had been planning on it, anyway,” he said. “And you just looked like you needed someone to pay attention to you.”

* * *

_I can’t be by myself tonight. I can’t be by myself tonight. I can’t be by myself tonight._

The joke was on me, though: I was never alone. Once I had Anastasia Furan in my mind I could not get her out again, and she had made it her mission to be my constant companion in life as well as death. She could not be outrun, not in an airport, not in the train station. She could not be drowned out by the sound of jet engines or whistles blowing. Though it had not been my plan after killing my target, I made my way to England. Her presence was with me at the ticket booth and I heard her voice echo against the train’s cement-and-tile tunnels when I took the stairs down. I could only watch the world from my body as a passenger; I was as much a person as the graffiti woman etched into a glowing billboard, a grimy smear in someone else’s story.

I hated Anastasia, and Anastasia had made me hate myself. It only made sense, after all. I was her protegée and she had filled me to the brim with mercury so I would be as poisonous as she was. 

_Choice is irrelevant. Can you make the sun rise? Can you ask the snow to fall? You are a factor of the seasons and the years, not an agent of them. Remember your place, Natalya._

In the airport, I saw a woman bouncing her toddler on her hip as they waited for their baggage. The baby was fussy and the mother was tired. I watched them but looked away when the mother noticed. _No one has ever loved me like that,_ I thought. I left the airport and hopped on a bus and sat in a seat where hundreds of others had sat before.

_Tusya, you are not thinking! Power is something you can take and hold in your hands. I have been its mistress for a long, long time. But meaning is contrived, dear. A pure invention. If you don’t have power then you have nothing at all._

City turned to countryside and I still hated myself. I thought about the girl in the lake. I thought about my swords slicing through the arteries and tendons of the last people my age who knew me. I thought about killing Anastasia and how she still lived in me, would always live in me. 

_Your body is your strength, and even that you cannot control. It moves in its own rhythms and patterns. You cannot stop the beating of your heart or the exchange of oxygen in your lungs. We are animal spirits in tapestries of flesh, nothing more._

And she was right. Did I ask to conceive? Did I ask to miscarry? This time it had worked in my favor, but in the end, wouldn’t my body always betray me? I would grow old. One day, I would die, just like all the others. Where would my freedom be then? My body would be taken and whether it shot full of holes or exploded with a car bomb, it would become someone else’s property. 

_The way it always has been,_ said a voice, and I was not sure if it was my voice or Madame Furan’s.

She was watching me and I knew it and once I was walking on the side of the road I let myself cry about it. Nothing mattered and all I had to show for it was a body that hadn’t started bleeding and a pair of swords that I could never bring carry-on.

It felt like hours passed, though, due to the time zone change, it was darker than it had been.

I was used to walking like a soldier, stiff and upright, but the more I walked the more I let my pose fall. It began raining. It didn’t take long for me to become soaked through to the skin. It didn’t matter. My body wasn’t mine; the thoughts in my head weren’t my thoughts. I was ankle deep in mud and my animal spirits tore me asunder, and the small part of me that wanted to get out of the rain reminded me, once and again, that I had to find someone else no matter what. 

I suppose they must have seen me on the security cameras, because Diabolus was waiting at the door when I finally made it up the drive to his house. 

“Raven!” he said, taking my bags from my hands and ushering me into his front hall. “What the devil happened?”

“I killed the man who ordered the hit on the Contessa’s daughter,” I said, my voice broken with tears. 

Darkdoom waited for me to continue and, when I did not, pressed, “Are you hurt? Did the pickup go badly? Does Nero know where you are?”

“No,” I moaned. 

“No?”

“To all of them.”

“Raven,” he said. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“I just don’t want to go home right now,” I said. “And yours is the only house I know.”

His confusion melted to pity, though I could see that there was anger in his posture, as well. Possibly, he had already been notified by Nero that I was missing, and here I was, feeling completely sorry for myself without a care in the world. 

“You’ll sleep here tonight,” he said. “You don’t have to talk to Nero, but I am going to let him know that you’re here.”

“I understand,” I said. I stared at my shoes, quite unable to meet his gaze. He is something like ten years my senior but I still had the sense that I was disappointing him like a father as he watched me drip mud onto his tile floor. 

Sighing, he set my bags to the side and went to the little bathroom to bring back a towel, which he perfunctorily draped over my shoulders. “You’ve given everyone a load of trouble, you know.”

I alarmed him all over again when he finished his little sermons and sent me up the stairs to get some rest—I refused to see a doctor—and heard me crying again. By then I had changed into a too-big sweatshirt and some of his wife’s things, and the former had two wet ovals where I was burying my face into it.

“You’re certain you’re not hurt?” he asked suspiciously, sinking next to me on the bed. 

“I’m sorry,” I said, attempting valiantly to speak evenly despite my tears, and even succeeding a little bit. “I’ve interrupted your night. I thought I’d handle it better.”

Darkdoom sighed, finally giving up his sternness completely. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m just glad you’re safe.” He pulled me into a hug and held me without knowing why I needed to be held, murmuring with the kindness of a brother until I felt the warmth deep in my bones. 

“Diabolus?”

“Hm?”

“How do you think you’re going to die?”

I couldn’t see his face, but his frown was clear in his voice. “I couldn’t say. I like to hope it won’t hurt too much. Why do you ask?”

“Just something I’ve been thinking about, I guess.”

“How do you think _you’re_ going to die?”

I was almost surprised when I told him the truth. “I guess I always thought I’d drown.”

My funeral dress arrived before Nero did. It was black, of course: plain and conservative. I knew I would have to go home eventually, but it had never occurred to me that Nero would expect me to join him at the Sinistre estate. Darkdoom let me use his spare room for the better part of a week without complaint, only asking that I be on time for dinner every night, which was simple enough. There were no other demands on my time. I spent my daylight hours tramping through the woods near his home, following deer trails to riverbeds and climbing the trees that were sturdy enough. My sadness and my bitter memories were never far from my thoughts, but I was mostly recovered from my dangerous grief, or whatever it was, that had made my first night back in England so dark.

I love the smell of fog in the morning when the sun comes over the horizon like the beginning of a story. I disrupt the peace with the gasp of my breath and the snapping of dry sticks under my boots. The world listens to the way I move so that we can move together. The Glasshouse attempted to strip me of identification with the physical reality in front of me. I was meant to be human only in name, de-personified but not quite an animal, either. I would have been wild. It was a comfort to think that, had they succeeded, I would have become as free as those woods with only the amber sunlight to act as my compass. Perhaps it was a comforting lie. I think that freedom lives in me, still. 

But I could not hide at Darkdoom’s house for the rest of my life. I was ready when Nero walked up at my campfire to fetch me. I smiled at him, and meant it.

“Natalya,” he said. “Diabolus told me to look for you here.”

Though I had a hundred things I wanted to discuss, I was suddenly shy, and could only think to say, “Here I am.”

Nero observed me on my tree stump with my mess kit and mostly-eaten sausage lunch, wrapped in plaid and my own awkwardness. He was hardly about to sit in the dirt, but he did squat down, eyes looking into the fire. 

“Diabolus has told me he gave you quite a few lectures already,” he said. “So I will spare you another from me. Instead I will ask you this, Natalya: is there anything you want to tell me?”

“No,” I said firmly. “I have no excuse for my behavior and I apologize for my actions. I shouldn’t have run off like that.”

Nero studied me with a blank face. Not for the first time, I found myself completely clueless as to the nature of his thoughts. He nodded, though, and stood. “By all accounts, you have benefitted from the break. We are in a stressful line of work. You should take better care to plan out breaks in your schedule.”

“I understand.”

He turned back toward the house. “The funeral is in a few hours. Are you packed?”

“Yes, sir.” I stood and doused my fire with the water bucket and sprinkled it with handfuls of dirt. I wiped my hands on my pants before taking up the rest of my belongings. Nero watched with distant curiosity. “I’m ready to go.”

Italy was a change of pace and I felt out-of-sync with the rhythms of seaside city life. People browsed little shops in stylish calm and did not smell of firewood. I was technically back on duty as a bodyguard and was armed in the event of an attack. Even so, it was Nero who never let me out of his sight, calling me back to his side whenever I threatened to fall behind. I felt keenly aware that something was lost between us, though whether it was respect or trust, I could not be sure. 

The funeral took place within the Sinistre estate on a large terrace that seated about fifty. The terrace was warm and fringed with trees, giving the mourners a largely comfortable environment to witness the service as the sun set. I recognized a handful of Nero’s colleagues as well as one or two H.I.V.E. instructors in the mix. More pleasing, it seemed a few people recognized me, and made a point to sit across the aisle. I confess, I felt an obscure flicker of pride to watch their nervous fidgeting as they thought about me. 

The string quartet played a prelude, after which the Contessa walked down the aisle, her face sheathed behind a veil. Her young granddaughter followed in tow; clearly, she had been crying. I wanted to think well of the Contessa, but deep down I suspected she was only bringing her granddaughter in public to remind the rest of us that her _gift_ had not yet been extinguished. As the sermon began, I could not help but wonder—what was she hiding beneath that veil? Grief? Or something else?

“Head up,” Nero murmured to me.

I lifted my head, doing my best to look as though I were interested in what was being said. My Italian was extremely poor, but Nero was only reminding me that we, too, were on display and being watched. 

The Contessa stood near the very end, when it was nearly dark. “I would like to thank you all for your attendance,” she said, her veil billowing as she breathed. “There are no words to describe the loss of your only child. Nonetheless, the Sinistre name will carry on, as it always has. Thank you.”

I looked at Nero to try and gauge his reaction. He calmly and pointedly did not look at me. The rector stepped again to the front and spoke first in Italian and then English, “In honor of Olivia Sinistre’s life, you are invited to join us at the lake to light lanterns that will brighten the sky with her memory. Refreshments will be served afterwards.”

The Contessa and her granddaughter began a procession down the path to the lake. Slowly, Nero and I stood as well. 

“Shall we?” he asked. I nodded. If there was going to be an attack, I thought, this would be the best time to do it. Between the darkness of the outdoors and the spectacle of the light show, it would be the perfect time to mount an assault. The Contessa’s security team seemed to have the same idea, and followed us down in a spreading formation. But, of course, I would expect nothing less from the Contessa’s personal staff. 

The Contessa and her granddaughter were the first to light their lanterns, walking out onto the dock before setting their little lanterns ablaze and releasing them into the sky. They left shortly afterwards, disappearing back into the light of the house. 

Nero offered me a lantern, which I took. We stood near the shore, and I thought about the drowned girl again. I was with Anastasia when she was called to examine the scene. I had not been able to look away from the girl’s face, where grains of sand had embedded themselves in her deteriorated skin and every one of her eyelashes had fallen away. I recognized her. I had sparred with her. And I had not noticed when she went missing.

“What do you think, Natalya?” Anastasia asked me, her mouth pursed.

“Ma’am?”

“Do you think she was a slut?” She asked me as though she were asking for the time. Anastasia liked to trap me with my words, let me speak until she could pull a pin from my mindset and collapse the structure of my beliefs in one blow. I feared that kind of analysis as she watched me.

I swallowed. “I think she is dead, Madame Furan.”

I think it surprised her. She smiled a little, and turned back towards the compound. “Quite right.”

I lit my lantern and held it long enough to watch the flame dance on its little wick. When I let go, it was not for the Contessa’s daughter, but for the girl in the lake because I missed her. Nero and I watched the lanterns in silence for a short while, watching our sparks get higher and higher until they mixed with the others and we could no longer identify our own anymore. I felt a cramp coming on. 

“We should pay our respects to the Contessa,” Nero said, herding me back toward the house.

“I don’t know what to say,” I told him. 

“Then say nothing,” he advised. He was still annoyed, I gathered.

The Contessa didn’t look at me the whole time Nero spoke with her, which was just as well. The ache in my belly had matured to pain, and while I was used to pain, that never made it easy. One more thing that was not mine to control, but certainly mine to endure. 

“You don’t look well,” Nero said, parting from the Contessa.

“I need to go,” I said quietly. We were surrounded by villains and my strength was essential. I concentrated on my breathing, in and out, and made an effort to keep my face as neutral as possible.

Nero frowned. “I’ll call for the car.”

It did little to reassure Nero that, once returned to our lodgings, I locked myself in the bathroom immediately and refused to tell him what was wrong with me. In addition to the pain, I had started bleeding, heavily, and so I found myself in residence on the toilet seat while I tried to think of a better solution. My own private torture. Nero pleaded with me through the door with growing anxiety—in retrospect, knowing that he knew I had been to an abortion clinic, I imagine his next logical thought was not that I was miscarrying but rather suffering the effects of a botched medical operation and thus in real danger of dying, et cetera. This failed to cross my mind whatsoever at the time and I firmly refused to open the door to him.

“Just leave me alone, Max,” I said. “I’ll come out when I’m ready.”

He quieted down for some time, but I could hear him pacing in the other room. His nervousness fed mine—even when the bleeding calmed some, I still did not feel ready to face him. I tried to focus my breathing again. 

_“Do you think she was a slut?”_

_“I think she is dead, Madame Furan.”_

I realized, then, that I had never imagined myself drowning, only drowned: a solitary body with one eye and one hand, waterlogged and weighed down with silt, and no one would think to ask for my name.

“Natalya,” Nero tapped at the door again. “Tell me what’s happening.”

“Can you bring me my bag?” I asked wearily. 

“Will you talk to me?”

“Yes,” I conceded. “But I need my bag.”

He brought it and left it at the door, occupying himself with a boiling kettle while he waited. I took a tylenol, lined my panties with the biggest pad I could find, and changed into sweatpants that had sponged up my blood before. Thus accoutred, I slipped out of the bathroom and curled up on the sofa, resting my head in the crook of my elbow.

Nero returned with two cups of tea. He looked reluctant to hand me my cup, unsure if this act would instigate a fight he did not want to have. 

I spared us both. “I’m having a miscarriage.”

“I see,” he said, his face unreadable. “And have you consulted a doctor?”

“Yes.” He handed me my tea. “As far as I know, it’s all… normal.”

Nero sat across from me, studying his own cup of tea. The awkwardness was difficult for me to bear. I did not want him to know this about me. I did not want him to think the worse of me for it. 

“If you want to talk about anything,” he said. “I will listen.”

We sat in silence for a long time. But he was right, somehow. I wanted to talk.

“I have been thinking about Anastasia Furan lately,” I told him. “She didn’t believe in freedom.”

“Indeed not,” Nero said, and he did not hide the distaste in his voice.

“It’s easy for me to fall back into her way of thinking,” I continued, pausing for a sip of tea. “That I am acted upon, and not the actor, and whether I make a decision or not, I can only be a passive player in the grand scheme of things. It’s stupid, but I wonder what she would say to me now, and I hate how much I still care about what she thinks, even when she’s gone.

“She was the closest thing I’ve ever had to a mother. My default way of seeing the world. And I don’t remember being loved but I remember her.” My voice was quiet and raspy as I looked directly into Nero’s eyes. “They say that people live on inside you when you remember them. It seems like, as long as I am alive, she will be, too.”

Nero set down his teacup and moved to my side immediately. “No,” he said firmly. “You are an individual and you may carry the weight of those memories but you are not her. You are Natalya. You belong to you.”

Somehow, this thought made me sad. “I know.”

I closed my eyes and pressed my pointer fingers against the bridge of my nose and breathed deeply. The tylenol hadn’t kicked in yet and even when the pain wasn’t intense, it was electric in its persistence. 

“Natalya?” Nero asked, his worry lurching forward again.

“It’s not enough,” I told him. “It will never be enough.”

“What isn’t?”

“Life. Living.” I had promised myself I wasn’t going to cry, but my eyes burned terribly. “Why would someone have a baby if they didn’t even want her?”

“Ah,” he said, understanding. “I see the trouble now.”

“The trouble is me,” I told him. With one hand he reached out and took my hand; with the other, he cupped my cheek, a smiling sorrow in his expression as he wiped away an errant tear with his thumb. 

“Never, my dear Natalya. Never.”

* * *

Otto waited up for us. Predictable. He is a boy who likes his fingers in other people’s pies—but that’s part of the reason he was enrolled at H.I.V.E. in the first place. 

“What did you learn?” he pressed us.

“Let us take off our coats, at least,” Nero said snippily.

I look at Otto and see a child from another reality: he has survived assassination attempts and animus and a whole host of other thorns. But he smiles bright at an age when I did not smile at all. I watch Otto and Nero banter with one another and find myself illogically envious of them both. 

“Did you dance?” Otto asked me.

“Yes,” I assured him. “I danced.”

When I was twenty-four, I thought I was broken in such a way that I could never be put back together. But people don’t break, not really. We are not dishes. We are not bones. When I had recovered from the initial symptoms of my miscarriage, Nero took me home and made the doctors examine me and explain a few things about birth control that no one had ever thought to mention before. It was a symptom of a larger void in my life—information everyone seemed to know but me. How do plants get energy from the sun? What was the Scramble for Africa, and what did it have to do with G.L.O.V.E.? Who was Charles Dickens? I was tasked to learn all this and more under Nero’s tutelage, and I rose to it. When given the opportunity, I wanted the world to talk back to me.

Still, a sadness followed me for many months afterwards, even after the Contessa returned from leave and my miscarriage was a footnote in my medical file. It had something to do with the Glasshouse and the girl in the lake and standing naked in a cement room with no one to scream on my behalf. 

Nero pestered me about dancing. “Do you know how?” he asked, the first time.

“No,” I told him stubbornly. 

“Stand up,” he said. “It will be fun.”

I knew what he would say if I argued that I was not meant to have fun. Coaxing me onto my feet, he pointed out an invisible napkin on the floor and encouraged me to touch its invisible corners with my opaque feet. We circled around the room without music, though he offered to find a record.

“I’m not in the mood,” I sighed.

“No?”

“Max,” I said hesitantly. “What’s going to happen when I die? I mean with my body.”

Clearly, my question had surprised him, but he did not falter as he led me around the room. “Well, I suppose that’s up to you. If you write a will, you can choose whether you wish to be buried or cremated. If it’s important to you, you can name the place you’d like your remains to be interred. Why do you ask?”

I told him about the girl who drowned in the lake.

“She was buried in an unmarked grave outside the grounds,” I said, becoming more agitated with every word. “And I don’t even remember her name. Maybe no one does. I don’t want to be like that, Max. I don’t want to be dumped in the ocean or left in a field like an accident. And I know it doesn’t matter because I’ll be dead but I don’t want to be alone the way she was alone. I can’t do it.”

We stopped dancing. I folded my arms, ashamed of my outburst.

“Is this what has been bothering you?” Nero asked, surprised. His expression softened. “If it is important to you, my dear, then it matters. No matter what I or anyone else thinks.”

I took a deep breath calming myself. “I’ll need to think about it. I don’t know where to pick. I just… I just want to choose.”

“Absolutely,” Nero agrees. “You can choose anything you want.”

“What if I want my ashes to be on display in the library?” I asked, only half teasing.

“That’s your prerogative, dear, but you should know future students might incorporate your remains into their pranks.”

“I’ll haunt them if they do,” I vowed. But even then, I didn’t think I would mind so much.

I wrote my will for the first time that night and left instructions to have my ashes poured into the volcano. It seemed dramatic and permanent, at the time—though it was not permanent enough to escape amendment in my annual revision. I tried to write this story for the first time, too. Though it was a relief to pick what would happen with my body, it was also a relief to tell my story, to choose its survival when I am gone. I return to it whenever I revise my will, sometimes tweaking bits and pieces, sometimes scrapping the whole thing. Still, this story is important to me. When I die, I do not think anyone else will remember the girl who died in the lake and I do not want her to be forgotten: she mattered, too. And she had no one to teach her to dance. 

I knew I would be rewriting this story the next time I came home before we left for the party. 

There were other things to think about upon our return to the safe house. Otto hosed us down for every little detail of the night. What did people wear? What did we see? What did we hear? How many security guards were there, and when did this dignitary or that visit the little boys’ room?

“Are you ready to go?” Nero asked. “Your shroud should be arriving shortly.”

“My shroud?” Otto countered. “Aren’t you coming home with me?”

“No,” Nero said. “We have a dinner reservation in Argentina tomorrow.”

“Argentina?” Otto frowned. “But nothing we’ve uncovered about the Disciples points to activity there.”

“It’s not for the mission,” Nero said. “It’s Raven’s birthday.”

“Max,” I said accusingly. He grinned fondly, knowing exactly what he had done.

Otto’s eyes glowed with excitement. “Raven! You never told us you had a birthday.”

“Everyone has a birthday,” I argued, but it was too late. Nero and I would go home and find that Otto had cooked up an unignorable celebration in my honor. 

As Otto climbed onto the shroud, he shot me a mischievous smirk.

“There he goes,” Nero said.

I was bent towards sarcasm. “I miss him already.”

But I forgave Otto immediately for his party and his antics. They sang for me. They asked me for stories. I even ate some cake. There are worse things than to be admired by one’s students. I will never have lanterns lit in my honor, but perhaps one day Otto will think of me and miss me, and when that happens see fit to lay a daisy on my grave. I’d like that. And I’d hate to discourage him from the visit.


End file.
